Ulrika: Sven and me - the truth

by LYNDA LEE-POTTER, Daily Mail

Ulrika Jonsson has now written the story of her extraordinary life. It's a moving and sometimes shocking account of an alluring, highly- sexed, passionate woman who has slept with men who have treated her appallingly.

Here, she talks to Lynda Lee-Potter about her life and the reasons for putting pen to paper.

In her book she makes no excuses and is harder on herself than anybody. 'I'm no saint,' she says.

She is frank about the hurt she inflicted on her ex-husband John Turnbull, who remains a rock in her life. His parents thought of her as a beloved daughter, but she was unfaithful to John twice and they can't forgive her.

She reveals her one-time need for danger and inner belief that there must be something wrong with anybody who loved her.

She tells of her traumatic childhood in Sweden, brought up by her charismatic, selfish father, who often had sex with a succession of girlfriends in front of his daughter.

Her mother walked out when Ulrika was eight and she longed for cosy domesticity and hot dinners, but supper was often ravioli eaten out of a tin. She was a latchkey kid who spent long hours on her own. Her father cooked only when he invited home yet another girlfriend and prepared his seduction supper of pork chops, tinned tomatoes and rice.

The legal age for sex in Sweden is 15 and on Ulrika's 15th birthday her father bluntly told her to have sex: 'He said: "Well, then, go out and get it, do your funky thing."'

Understandably, her selfcentred, vain mother is dreading the book and early chapters are a devastating account of the way she deserted her child.

In many ways this is a heartbreaking autobiography about a girl who ached for love, but time and time again became embroiled in relationships with too many men who weren't worthy of either her brains or her beauty.

Her latest and most publicised boyfriend, of course, was England's football manager Sven Goran Eriksson, and this is a relationship which has still not been resolved. When she talks of him her lovely face softens, her wide mouth smiles and there is neither anger nor regret.

Her memories of the affair, before it became public, are of a polite, gentle, sensual man who was a tender lover and treated her with great respect.

They spent a night together in his villa in Portugal and also made love in his large, elegant London house. He talked about Nancy Dell'Olio as 'the Italian' or 'the third party', which in my view is not how men describe women they love. It was as though he couldn't bear to speak her name.

When the affair with Ulrika became known Nancy dismissed her as a nonentity and announced that actually she and Sven were engaged.

Ulrika issued a dignified statement saying that she and Sven were no longer in a relationship. However, he continued to ring her and say that he and the Italian were certainly not engaged.

He insisted that after the World Cup he would finally get rid of Nancy. When asked by one male friend if he is afraid of Nancy, he replied: 'Yes.'

He revealed his worries that she might also write an autobiography. 'When a man is with a woman for three years,' he said, 'she knows a lot.'

Now Ulrika hasn't heard from him for four months and she remains puzzled at his silence: 'The final call was from South Korea at the beginning of June on the day that Sweden played England in the World Cup. He left a jolly message on my mobile and since then, nothing.

'I really believed I'd get another call, because he was insistent to me that his relationship with Nancy would end. He was adamant that he did not want a scandal before the World Cup. The scandal would not be him leaving her, but the gold nugget of information that she may have on him.

'He said: "After June, I don't care what happens."'

Once again this week Nancy hit the headlines when she dressed to kill in a £5,000 skin-tight red trouser suit with a plunging neckline.

She didn't look like a winner but a woman who is trying too hard. At home she is said to cry a lot and is reported to have told Sven: 'Marry me tomorrow. I don't care if we then divorce, but I want to have the status of being Mrs Eriksson.'

Admittedly, Ulrika has made her own mistakes with men, but she can't understand how Nancy can stay under the circumstances. 'He was going to end things, irrespective of me. Being with Nancy was not the life that he wanted.

'I can only believe what people say, that he's frightened of her. He spoke so candidly and openly about her to me. He was tired of their arguing.

'This is a highly ambitious woman. I don't have much sympathy for her, because she knows the situation. How can you be told every day that you're not wanted and not loved, but still stay?

'I felt very loved by him. He was charming and generous emotionally. He was a real gentleman, almost more Italian than Swedish.

'He was very keen. Once when his daughter was over, the three of us went to my local restaurant, which felt a big thing to me. Earlier he told me he'd sent the Italian away and I said "Just be on your own with your daughter", but he wanted us to meet.

'She's lovely and a very bright girl, so she must have worked out what was going on. I think he's a great father, very loving. I'm not sure if he's been a great husband.'

Nancy and Sven share his London house and Ulrika asked him if they still slept together. 'He said: "No." And in the three years I've been with her I haven't once asked her what she's been up to in the day.

'I said: "Does she have her own money?" He replied: "If she has, she doesn't spend it."

'She called me "this wretched girl" and then the following day he went out to dinner with her.

'I did put it to him that she forced him to go. He denied it because I don't think he wanted to seem weak. But it wouldn't surprise me to know that a gun had been held to his head. The mere fact that afterwards he said: "Well, I'm still alive" was quite revealing.

'I said to Sven: "I want to make one thing quite clear. I will never fight for you. I will never have that battle." ' Nancy, of course, has frequently been pictured kissing Sven, but he told Ulrika she often puts on a performance if she knows photographers are around.

When the story of their affair first emerged, a friend of Ulrika in the sporting world rang to tell her that during Sven's relationship with Nancy there had been other women. 'I thought "My God, I've been taken for a complete bloody idiot, thank God I haven't completely let myself go."

'When I confronted him with it and asked if there had been others he said, "Yes, of course." He told me they were before me, but that shows you the disdain he had for this woman.

'He wanted to get a place for me in North London where we could meet. I said "Are you mad?" Even if we'd arrived separately somebody would have seen us.'

Considering his fame in World Cup year, Sven took amazing risks.

He was driven by his chauffeur to Ulrika's house, which is an hour from London, and took her out for lunch and dinner.

'He phoned two or three times a day.

'I don't look back on the affair with any longing, but I do have moments when I think: "Well, it's a great shame." We were very happy together. I was respectful of him and we laughed a lot.

'He's a man who is very comfortable with himself, very sure. He never told me he loved me and I never told him. He said: "Let's take this for what it is." I said: "I don't know what it is."

'He said: "Let it develop into whatever it's going to be." I never talked about the future, but I was on the verge of falling in love with him. I said: "I'm starting to feel things which I don't want to." '

Ulrika was introduced to Sven at a party by Tony Blair's spin doctor Alastair Campbell. She's a passionate football supporter and wanted to get Sven's autograph. He asked her in Swedish if she would mind giving him her telephone number so that he could call her.

She replied in Swedish as a suspicious Nancy watched. 'She was very wary. I'm a great lover of women, but I got the instant impression that she was saying: "This is my territory, keep away." She gave me a cold, false smile.

Later, when the whole Press thing blew up, Sven said to Nancy: "Why don't you get out now before you completely lose face?" She said, "No, no, no."

'She feels she'll lose incredible face whenever she leaves. I would never stay in any situation where I wasn't wanted.

'When I finally called it off he said: "Well, it's up to me now to sort out my private life and I'm going to do that as quickly as possible."'

SINCE Ulrika first came to prominence as TV-am's blonde, dazzling weathergirl, she has rarely been out of the headlines. She met Prince Edward through an old friend of his who worked at TVam, but they never actually slept together. "We did nigh on the full works,' she says, 'but absolutely not that, which was my decision. I just wasn't hugely attracted to him.'

She's always looked glowingly confident but underneath she felt worthless. This led to her going out with men who weren't fit to lick her boots, but they humiliated and denigrated her.

'I was always wanting to please them, trying to make the situation all right.'

She stayed for many months with footballer Stan Collymore, who was both disturbed and violent. She was frightened of him, but time and time again she returned to him.

On one occasion he locked her out of his house in the middle of the night and left her crying at the door wearing only a T- shirt and her knickers. Later he went berserk and repeatedly kicked her head as she lay crouched on the floor in a Paris bar. He was so crazed and out of control she was lucky to escape with her life. He then cut up all her clothes into tiny pieces.

'Stan was very abusive verbally and emotionally and that extended into the bedroom. He had to have a psychological power over me, which meant talking me down. He'd say: "You're c***, you're s***." I wanted affection, but he found it difficult to give. Then you'd get a little splurge which kept you going.'

People were amazed that such a vibrant, intelligent career woman could be with such a thug. However, in a way she'd been conditioned to destructive relationships as a child. 'I was in love with my father,' she says, 'I was infatuated by him. He could do no wrong in my eyes.

'He was such a character. There was something tremendously alive about him and he found life just one big joke. He was scatty, no money, charming.

'He co- owned a driving school but his business went bust and then he became a driving inspector. He had sex with so many girls and I hated them because he was able to get pleasure from them and they gave him pleasure. I knew it was something grown-ups did.

'We used to go out sailing on his boat, they'd be lying next to me and just carry on as if I wasn't there. And it would happen in the living room as though they couldn't stop themselves.

'I remember asking one of his girlfriends why she screamed in the night and she said, "Well, sometimes you do when you get pleasure."

'My dad was very flippant about sex, very uninhibited, he'd walk around naked anywhere. I never associated sex with love and it's something I've battled with over the years. If you don't see it being treated with respect, then that's how you give yourself to that act.'

Ulrika shares her life with her 23-month old daughter Bo and eight-year- old son Cameron. Her ex-husband, cameraman John Turnbull, is Bo's godfather and she calls him Daddy John. Despite their divorce, his love has remained and she loves him as a brother.

Bo's genetic father is German resort manager Markus Kempen, who walked out on his daughter when she was two weeks old and recovering from surgery. She was born with a complicated heart defect and doctors said that she would need three operations, including the first when she was only six days old.

Ulrika had to place her tiny daughter on the operating table. She saw her covered in wires and tubes and the anaesthetist told her to kiss her baby goodbye.

BO survived, but after she came round from surgery a tube had been down her throat for so long that when she cried she was unable to make any sound. She found it difficult to feed and Ulrika and Markus slept in the hospital.

Finally, they were able to take Bo home and then Markus left them both. It was a terrible betrayal, but Ulrika minded more for her daughter than herself.

'I was closer to the edge,' she says, 'than ever before.' Temporarily, John Turnbull moved back in with the beautiful woman who has hurt him so much and without him, she says, she would not have survived.'

'I could never have hoped that John would care for Bo the way he cares for Cameron, but he does. He loves this little girl and thinks she's fantastic. He lives his life for his children. Once a week he takes both Cameron and Bo so I can have at least one night's sleep.'

It's an unbelievable story of love and Ulrika says that whoever she might meet in the future, John is Bo's father for life. Bo has already had a second operation and she will need another next year. 'Markus is not spiritually or emotionally her father. I'm certainly not going to let him have the title of Daddy. Now I don't feel anything for him - I don't even feel anger.

'He left me for the first time when I was eight months pregnant and that was the most dreadful and lowest part of my life. When the sexual side of a relationship is so strong and bonding, as it was with Markus, it's hard to let go even if the rest of the relationship is rubbish.

'He's another who is quite scared of the book. I said: "There is nothing about your behaviour that wasn't orchestrated by you. I don't have to say what an a***hole you are. People will make their own minds up." But he's frightened of how he will look. He's terribly vain.'

Ulrika lives in a rambling house on a hill overlooking Berkshire and her latest programme, How Do I Look?, goes out on ITV tonight.

The house is having extensive rebuilding and her drawing room is in chaos. When I arrive early she opens the door laughing because she's just washed her hair and it's hanging damply around her face.

She's wearing a black T-shirt and combat trousers with bare feet since the Swedish custom is to take off one's shoes when entering a house.

Sven followed the custom and his shoes were left in the hall. 'They were certainly not left as a kind of Keep Out sign outside the bedroom door, as was reported. And we were not caught making love by my nanny, though obviously we did make love in my house.'

Ulrika feels that the situation with Sven remains unresolved, but her life is on an even keel after two terrible years.

'At an early stage in writing the book I became quite ill. I was going through a depression. I felt I was in the wrong job, that I should give it all up. I'd read about myself and I felt I didn't know that monster.'

Another person who is concerned about Ulrika's memoirs is Yorkshire hulk James Crossley, better known as Hunter, of Gladiators fame.

When he knew that she was writing her autobiography he sold the story of the fact that during their relationship she'd had an abortion. 'I don't give a s*** what he thinks,' she says with justification.

Writing the book has been cathartic and she now accepts the powerful influence that her childhood had on her adult life. She's regained her self-respect and she has much to be proud of.

The isolated child who felt unloved is a devoted mother who cares for her children like a lioness. 'I've always striven for that family unit where you feel unconditional love without limits.

'My mother said to me only three weeks ago: "I didn't know what I did was wrong." I just can never understand why, when she left my dad, she didn't take me with her. I love her but there are times when I haven't liked her.

'Cameron's eight and it hurts me if I have to leave him for a day. There's every reason for him to be messed up because his parents are divorced, yet he's incredibly well balanced.

'I put that down to his total assurance that he's loved. That gives you a confidence and standards by which to measure yourself and other people.

'I can't bear to see pain and longing in children's faces. I make absolutely sure every day that Cameron knows how loved he is, how great and lovely he is. Never having had that bred my lack of self-confidence. I never felt worthy.'

Today there is no romantic attachment in her life, though she's unlikely to be alone for long. Meanwhile, she's buying a magical house on the edge of the sea in Sweden.

Also she wants to make it clear that she is not bereft or pining for Sven though, like all of us, she is intrigued by the situation. Certainly, I suspect that if he ever does find enough courage to get rid of 'the Italian', Ulrika wouldn't be averse to a phone call.